Typeform receives Series B funding. Now what?

Hey there. David and Robert here—cofounders of Typeform. Thanks for stopping by. 🙂

We never thought we’d be saying this a few years ago, but Typeform just raised $35M in Series B funding. Yikes.

We’d love to tell you about why we raised this round, what we plan to do with the money, and what it means for you. But first, let’s go back in time to explain why Typeform exists in the first place.

Eureka from the restroom

About 4 years ago, we were both running our separate design/web-dev agencies from a co-working space in Barcelona. We had this common client, a Spanish toilet company, that wanted a lead-generation form for their flagship store. The project brief? Capture people’s attention and collect email addresses.

So we put our heads together and figured we’d come up with something pretty fast. How hard could it be? Just pop “engaging lead-generation form” into Google, do a little customization work, and boom, bill the client. Turns out it wasn’t that simple.

Because every form-building solution seemed to be exactly the same—just digital versions of lifeless paper forms. So we started getting a little bummed out about the product. Nothing out there seemed good enough to incentivize people to give up their valuable data.

All we saw was “Name? Sex? Age?” These aren’t questions, they’re commands.

So we made a decision that would change our lives (of course we didn’t know it then). We decided to build our own form from scratch.

The design ethos of our new project seemed obvious from the start. It wasn’t just about what information people needed, but how they were going to get it. So we designed everything around empathy for the respondent.

Here were some of our ground rules: ask just one question at a time, use natural language, apply seamless design/UX on mobile, and run built-in logic to emulate real-life conversations.

Without really knowing it, we’d built the first conversational form. And a Typeform prototype was born.

Fast forward a few years

We now have over 160 amazing employees, 2 beautiful offices in Barcelona, customers all over the world, and millions of people completing typeforms every month. We’ve built a truly human company that we’re proud of.

But maybe you’ve noticed that we’ve also been a little slow. Sure, we shipped you a few new features, but not at the speed we wanted to. We think we can do better. And we believe that the new phase we’re entering as a company—more on that below—will be a real game changer. Both for us, and for you in terms of what we deliver.

Because our goal is to take Typeform further than just conversational forms. We’ve always known it was possible, but now we can actually make it happen.

This is where our latest investment round comes in. We want to build the world’s first conversational data collection platform to help people solve real problems.

Wait, what the **** is conversational data collection? Good question!

Look at it this way: businesses need a practical data-collection process, respondents need empathy-driven design to provide good responses, and the entire experience needs to be inspired by real-life conversations.

Basically, conversational data collection is about asking your employees, customers, or audience for information that benefits you, in a way that benefits them. Think conversational, not transactional.

What can you expect from us?

At Typeform, we put innovation at the core of everything we do, so expect lots of advancements in this new conversational data collection space. Okay, like what?

First, we’re going to revolutionize the way people build typeforms. The experience will soon be faster, simpler, and more intuitive. We’re applying the empathy-driven approach we created for respondents and bringing it to you—the maker.

We’re also refreshing the design of our website to better reflect our brand, and putting forward a stronger value proposition, which should help you (and us) understand where we’re trying to go.

Typeform is also going to start playing nice with all your favorite apps and tools. So expect goodies like native point-and-click integrations, which will take the developer experience to an entirely new level. As a (big) first step toward this goal, we’re proud to introduce our Developer Platform, which includes our all-new Developer Portal. Go ahead, take a peek (if that’s what you’re into, of course).

And to those who’ve followed Typeform from the start, we’d like to say a special thanks. None of this would be possible without your enthusiasm and support—which continues to humble us and the entire team here in Barcelona. To those who’ve just recently come aboard, a very warm welcome to you. You’ve joined us at a very exciting time so hold tight, we think it’s about to get pretty exciting.

In exchange for your trust, we promise to remain human, honest, and of course, very conversational about the entire Typeform journey.